Carpet has been a Made in America category since the advent of tufting technology and the industry has always been centered in Northwest Georgia, making Dalton the Carpet Capitol of the World.

Unlike other American manufacturing, carpet tufting has stayed onshore, but has suffered like the rest of the country with the effects of the recession. Now, with the recovery, both the carpet industry and the labor force that supports it are coming back.

Brian Anderson, president and CEO of the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, said, “As much as we had to lose four years ago, when the recession hit our area as hard as it hit any, there’s that much upside coming. But, the recovery is running parallel to the national economy — it’s a long L; not a sharp V.”

Northwest Georgia has a lot to offer, not only carpet manufacturers but all sorts of companies, according to Anderson. “We are within one day’s drive of 60 percent of the U.S. population and are an advanced manufacturing community,” Anderson stated. “We have a workforce that understands manufacturing and shiftwork. Dalton has not only survived, but has made strategic investments to make us even better.”

Unemployment in Whitfield County, Ga., including Dalton, stood at 10.1 percent as of May 1, 2013, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Since 1990, unemployment in the Northwest Georgia region has run parallel to the carpet industry’s ups and downs.

In 1999, in April and May, the rate was a low 2.3 percent, and in November 2011 it was an uncomfortably high 13.5 percent.

Top three carpet companies, employers

The Dalton Chamber ranks Shaw, Mohawk and Beaulieu as the top three employers in the region. The economy, said Randy Merritt, president of Shaw, is getting better. “As it does, employment will also improve,” he said. “In 2012, Shaw hired 2,218 people for its Northwest Georgia facilities. Some were replacement and some were people coming back for additional shifts,” Merritt explained.

“In Northwest Georgia, Shaw has more than 100 facilities — manufacturing, distribution, administration. Of our total workforce of 23,000 people, 15,000 are in Georgia,” Merritt reported. “There is no doubt the entire industry has reduced its numbers of employees to right size to demand. Some of those will come back and some won’t,” he noted.

Some jobs will be changed. “For instance, Shaw’s hard wood facility in South Pittsburg, Tenn. used to be a carpet yarn mill. There is a continuous effort to streamline and automate but Shaw expects to bring back thousands more jobs in North Georgia in the future,” he stressed.

The carpet industry continued to invest in its future even during the recession, according to Tom Lape, president of Mohawk’s residential and commercial carpet. “Carpet manufacturers were investing in significant capital assets,” Lape said. The transition away from staple yarns to filament yarns has resulted in more yarn extrusion in Northern Georgia than ever. “The net effect of all the new extrusion was to moderate the unemployment,” he said.

“Now, in 2011, 2012 and 2013, the industry has stabilized and there has been a net gain in employment,” Lape reported. “Demand is recovering faster than automation is increasing, and driving employment. More jobs will be coming back over the next few years, but not back to 2005/2006 levels,” he acknowledged.

While Mohawk has not reopened any shuttered facilities so far in the recovery, it has made significant re-investments in the past several years that have been largely in the Northwest Georgia area, according to Lape. “Some have increased the company’s capacity. Mohawk wants to be a desirable place to work and, as we invest, we should be able to expand employment over time,” he added.

Ralph Boe, co-CEO of the Beaulieu Group LLC, expects recovery to come slowly, over time. “The housing market is recovering and as houses sell, there is a domino effect on refurbishment so there will be increased sales of flooring,” Boe said.

The residential flooring market as a whole is in for some changes, according to Boe. “The growth of hard surface flooring not only takes away from carpet market share but, over time, will reduce hard surface flooring sales as well, because ceramic, stone and wood won’t be replaced as frequently. There may be more rug business going forward or even people putting carpet down over hard surface.”

But other trends will also influence the category. “At the same time, the U.S. has a growing overall population and those people have to live somewhere. New single and multi-family housing will have a mix of hard surface flooring and carpet,” Boe stated, “But I don’t see carpet coming back to its 2005 and 2006 levels in the short run. It probably will by 2020 before the change in mix and population growth can bring carpet back to its pre-recession levels,” he judged.